Rsync could use system loadavg (/proc/loadavg) measure to throttle disk operations on both sites. This especially includes file table operations as those are more costly. Checking loadavg every file is not a good idea, but checking it every x seconds (when next file accessed) could be ok. If max load is exceeded operations should freeze for few seconds (possibly another parameter)
--load-check-interval-min = 5 (seconds)
--max-load = 8
--load-freeze = 10(seconds)